Don’t get me wrong, Blogger and WordPress.com have their advantages. They’re shockingly simple to use, and WordPress.com makes it easy to follow blogs and keep up with other writers.

And maybe you’re not interested in blogging. So you figure you can throw something together in Wix or Weebly.

But if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.

Don’t worry, you won’t need any of this for your author website!

So let’s look at the two main contenders for your author website.

Yep, sorry kids. I’m ruling out Wix and Weebly straight away. Sure, they might be easy to use. And they might even give you a decent author website…for now.

But what if you want to add a blog later? (And you should.)

Or what if you want to add other bells-and-whistles? Content management systems (CMS) like Squarespace and WordPress will be way more helpful. And you’ll have a much more professional looking website at the end of it.

The best type of web design…

Squarespace

Squarespace has been making waves of late, and plenty of solopreneurs have been setting up their websites using the platform. Mariah Coz of Femtrepreneur is certainly very vocal about her love for Squarespare. So what are the pros and cons?

The Pros

Super easy to use, with plenty of funky templates to choose from, all using their drag-n-drop ‘what you see is what you get’ website builder.

All-in-one solution, dealing with your domain name and web hosting in one.

Squarespace is not open source, unlike WordPress, so only their own products are available for use…that just means no dodgy plugins or themes that don’t work properly.

The Cons

Expensive – A ‘personal’ website will set you back $16 a month. That’s $26 a month if you’re making money as an author and it’s your business website.

System-wide outages – as I was writing this post, every Squarespace site I landed on was giving me a 504 Gateway Timeout error.

You’re still dependent on a single entity. If Squarespace goes away…

WordPress

WordPress is my platform of choice for my author website. I’ve built all of my websites on it. And that’s the beauty of it. WordPress isn’t just for blogs. You can create whole websites with whatever level of sophistication you want. You don’t even need to use the blog feature if you don’t want to.

And if you’re interested in WordPress but scared by the technical stuff, don’t worry. Get alerted here when my WordPress for Authors course is available and get 10% off the price.

The Pros

Use plugins to build your mailing list, sell books, or protect your site with firewalls.

It’s highly customisable and way more flexible than Squarespace so your author website can be truly unique.

Install Genesis Framework from StudioPress (aff link) and get a professional experience with excellent support and great security.

The Cons

There is a learning curve, so getting it to work can take a little time.

You need to organise a domain name, hosting, and installation of WordPress yourself (I use Dreamhost [aff link])

You need to keep on top of security to prevent hacks, though plugins like Wordfence will help.

Quality of plugins and themes varies, so you may have to pay to get the best, and customer service varies.

So you might wonder why I recommend WordPress given it has more cons than Squarespace. It’s not just the fact that I pay less per month for WordPress than I would for Squarespace. The flexibility helps – I wouldn’t be able to use CoSchedule with Squarespace. That plugin helps me manage my social media posting.

But ultimately it’s up to you. If being able to create a site using a drag-and-drop function is more important than flexibility and cost, then choose Squarespace. If sheer power and functionality are more important, then choose WordPress.

Over to you! Which platform do you use – or which do you think you’ll check out?

Confused by this author brand stuff?

Get some clarity and get stuck into fonts, colours, and the reason you need an author brand in my free 5-day email course.